Fall Pre-View 2012 Astronomy CourseMississippi Valley NightSky ConservationThe Sky Around Us

Program developed by-Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority-Royal Astronomical Society of Canada-Ottawa Astronomy Friends

Instructors:Pat BrowneStephen CollieRick Scholes

Course AssistantAmelia Booth

Software-Earth Centered Universe courtesy David Lane-Stellarium - GPL

Lectures combined with Observing

Course Designed for…Astronomical Observing: (not too hot, too buggy, too cold, not too late for

sunset) Course time: Fridays,19:30 – 22:00 formally with priority given to observing

when clear

5 lectures covering observing the night sky:

I Celestial Sphere and our place in it

II Stars within our galaxy,binary systems, variable stars, stellar nebulae

III Star clusters Open Clusters within the disk of the Milky Way, Globular clusters , in a halo around the Milky way

IV Galaxies

V Observing stellar and non-stellar objects, galaxies, clusters of Galaxies …

Activities

include …

Solar Observing

Lunar Observing (First Quarter Moon)

Deep Sky Observing (solar system to island universes... on-site at the Mill of Kintail)

Guest speakers on Astro-photography,Introduction to the Our Galaxy, Planetary ScienceComet Hunting... Observing Lab Exercisesstar chartsastronomy books/softwarelogbooks and handbooks

Moonlight Walk toThe Fred LossingObservatory (FLO)

Software applications – tools to aid your planning session

Course Notes and Resources available at www.millstonenews.com/the-night-sky

Mill of Kintail Night Sky Conservation Yahoo Group.

Postings for the course, and discussion group are here. For all events and notices use this site. You will be receiving an invitation to join the group if you have an emailaddress…You can join here:http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MoK_NSC

Night Sky Conservation Mississippi MillsBy-Law 03-62

http://www.mississippimills.ca/en/live/resources/Illuminationby-lawandinformation.pdf

Mississippi Mills is the home of the Fred Lossing Observatory (FLO) maintained and operated by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC).

Located at the Mill of Kintail Conservation Area, it was built by the scientific community with high-quality optics from the National Research Council of Canada.

Thanks to the continued preservation of the night sky at the Mill of Kintail, the local dark skies have permitted the visual discovery of 5 comets, distinguishing FLO as the only observatory in Canada to discover comets.

Preserving Our Dark Sky Site –

Long History of Looking up

Comet Garadd click on this link to download movie (19 MB): http://millstone.typepad.com/files/garad2-2.avi

Lecture 1 The earth in space

Star Ship Earth within its Celestial Sphere

• The sky in different seasons

• The Solar System and asteroid belt and

cometary orbits: Planetary and comet observations (objects which appear as ‘wanderers’ in our night sky).

• These objects appear above

the horizon at night at certain times for our latitude)

Current observations of planets in the the solar System … planets Mars and Saturn – evening sky

• Navigating around the sky – knowing when to observe objects and where to look. Learn your constellations!

Planets appear in both the Morning and Evening twilight in any given year.Planets are wanderers that dip down into the glare of the sun and re-appear as the angle between the

sun and the planetincreases .

Mercury, currently available as a pre-dawn planet is at greatest western elongation from the sun. This means Mercury will precede the sun before dawn as the sun rises in the East. Since Mercury rises before the sun, it will be west of the sun in the dawn sky, and hence still be visible in twilight conditions.

Daylight

Daylight

Planets above our Horizon when the Sun is below the Horizon

Look for Mars and Saturn in the southwest as darkness falls. Look for Venus and Jupiter, the sky’s brightest and second-brightest planets, respectively, in the eastern predawn darkness and morning twilight.Mercury, the innermost planet, joins up with Venus and Jupiter in the morning sky around the time of the Perseid meteor shower – Aug 12 2012.

Cometary Orbits and Meteor Showers – Perseid Meteor Shower Aug 11, 12, 13

• A meteor shower happens when Earth passes through a stream of cometary debris that has been shed by the parent body (comet or asteroid). The debris stream follows an orbit similar to the parent comet. Showers are locally observable when the date/time and elevation above the horizon make them visible in the night-time sky for our location.

• We know when showers occur just as we know when planets are visible by understanding their orbit. The parent comet orbit has 6 properties that define its motion in space (ephemerides).

• Specifically we know that this observable event is placed away from the glare of the sun.

It is an annual event, as the debris path lies in a relatively fixed intersection with Earth orbit.

The Annual Perseid shower visible at night over North America - August 11, 12, 13. Earth orbit crosses the debris of Comet Swift Tuttle, a periodic comet which refreshes the debris every century or so….

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/109P/Swift-Tuttle)

To Observe:

Find a dark, open sky away from the glare of unshielded lights, lie down comfortably on a reclining lawn chair and enjoy the show. You don’t need to know the constellations. You don’t need special equipment - (just a sky free from lights) .. to see particles streaking across the sky . As seen from around the world, the increase in rate occurs in the dark hours just before dawn . After midnight, the meridian approaches the radiant which lies in Perseus.

Meteor Showers are debris left in Comet Orbits

Celestial Sphere

The celestial sphere : Extending out From our position on Earth

Imaginary sphere = Heavens above!Simple way of thinking about when and where stars celestial objects appear above our location on Earth - (Not a model of the universe.)

Object Position• Right Ascension (RA)• Declination (Dec)

As on earth we have Longitude and Latitude.

Example: We can locate the celestial object, like the double star Mizar specifying its RA and Dec.

Earth Rotation – Night and Day

around the Earth Orbit Day and Night around the yearAs we stand on the earth looking up ½ of the hemisphere is obscured by the earth itself.

As the earth orbits around the sun in the

year, the night-sky will contain different

objects, different constellations.

What we see in the sky depends on

1. Time of Year (and what is our night-time view when our Time of Day is after sunset)

2. Our latitude on earth: This sets our horizon, and what is above or below it when we look up at night.

Objects below the horizon cannotbe viewed. Certain celestial objects remain permanently below our

horizon.

Earth Orbit , Rotation, Tilt

A Year on Earth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhqzW97_47w&feature=relmfu

Copy and paste link to see video

Earth’s orbit yearly...

• Different constellations and objects - stars, star clusters and galaxies within these constellations appear overhead in the night sky

• Different planets in the night sky due to position with respect to the Sun.

• Different Seasons occur: ½ of the year tilted away from the sun (winter northern hemisphere) and the other ½ we are tilted towards the sun.

We do not see the same objects in the sky day after day due to our Orbit around the sun.

Star time is different from solar time:

Star time is measured from the star rising one day to the next. Since the earth rotates as it goes around its orbit, the star wil rise 4 minutes earlier each day. This is sidereal time.

Watch starship earth travel through space in

A year on Earth …

Earths ORBIT:Different constellations and objects - stars, star clusters and galaxies within these constellations appear overhead in the night sky

EARTH’s orbit in Spring allows us to see away from the Milky Way out of the Galactic Plane

SummerWinter

Earth’s TILT … ½ of the year tilted away from the sun (winter northern hemisphere) and the other ½ we are tilted towards the sun.

Earth’s Tilt: Seasons Due to the Tilt of the Earth With Respect to the Sun

Fall /Spring - Equal Day and NightSummer – More Daylight, More Incident RadiationWinter – Less Daylight, Less Incident Radiation

Summer

Winter

Fall

Analemma shows path of sun in the sky 1. High/Low points reflect Earth’s Tilt

2. Curve describes Earth’s eccentric Orbital difference from mean solar time

Path of the Sun in our SKY

Summer

Winter

Yearly Trace of our Sun in the SkyAnalemma – difference between Mean and True Solar Path

What we can see in the (early) Fall …

The celestial sphere presented in this lecture is set for August 17 2012 at 10 pm

• Constellations:Notice that the Big Dipper is northwest rather than north, as it too rotates around the celestial pole.

• Bright stars: can be identified such as Lyra in

constellation Vega; the Summer Triangle (Deneb, Altair and Vega) are very obvious.

• Bright clusters such as The Great Globular

Cluster in the constellation Hercules

Next time we will see the celestial sphere has turned a bit. We will notice this as we look up!

• Our OWN GALAXY!

In Summer and Fall, right now, we see the star clouds in our owngalaxy, the Milky Way.

Let's hear a story from Rick about a memorable encounter with our galaxy.

http://www.millstonenews.com/2012/07/introduction-to-our-galaxy-the-milky-way-.html

Globular Clusters in the direction of the Galactic Center Where We are in the Milky Way…

Historical Note: 1920 Harlow Shapley determines Galactic Center

Shapley used the Cepheid luminosity-period relationship to measure the distances to nearby globular clusters.  For the most distant globular clusters, he measured the brightness of the entire cluster, and assumed that all globular clusters were about the intrinsic luminosity. His final estimates were not far from the modern values.

When he plotted the location of these clusters, an overall picture of the Milky Way galaxy emerged. The Sun, as it turned out, was located in the galactic disk, about two–thirds of the way out from the galactic center.

They were densest in the direction of Sagittarius

By plotting distances to each cluster he was able to establish the center of the distribution and locate its distance from out Sun . Star clouds in Sagittarius lie in the disk in the galactic plane close to the center.

The Observers Handbook and Journal of the RASC

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada has several Celestial Catalogs for Canada at different times of the year.

The Observer’s Handbook Editionincludes data from 17 of theastronomical object catalogs Printed in the Observer’s Handbook.The catalogs :1. Brightest Stars2. Nearest Stars3. Double and Multiple Stars4. Colored Double Stars5. Carbon Stars6. Open Clusters7. Globular Clusters8. Galactic Nebulae9. Messier Catalogue10. Finest NGC Catalogue11. David Levy’s Deep Sky Gems12. Deep Sky Challenge Objects13. Southern Hemisphere Splendours14. Dark Nebulae15. Nearest Galaxies16. Brightest Galaxies17. Radio Sources

Astronomical Catalog – YOUR first one Messier Catalog’

M objects ….

What’s the M in M13,or for that matter M1 … M109?A contemporary comet hunter, David Levy writes…

Fuzzy objects that are not comets lurk all over the

sky . They are beautiful to watch, but for people

who search for comets they can be viewed as an

inconvenience; comet discoverer Leslie Peltier

called them “comet masqueraders.”. At the end of 1758, Charles Messier found

a fuzzy patch around Zeta Tauri. As he studied it from hour to hour and

from night to night, he found that the faint fuzzy

object stayed plastered to the sky; even though it

looked like a comet, it never moved like a cometDeep Sky Objects, David Levy, p. 24

There are other catalogs,but the Messier catalog is the best one to start with!

Astronomical Objects – What We Can See with Simple Optical Equipment (Binocs and

Scopes)

Solar System Objects: Planets, Comets, Asteroids, Meteors

Double Multiple, Variable, and Stellar Objects (Special Stars)

(M27 Nebula)

Open Clusters and “Star Clouds)(M24)

Globular Clusters

(M13)

‘Bright’ Galaxies(M101)

Many if not all of the Messier Objects are visible

in binoculars and small telescopes at a site like the Mill of Kintail near FLO.

The Milky Way Galactic Plane crossing our Meridian – August

Behold! Galactic and globularclusters rising up outof the steam of the

'teapot' of Sagittarius

As the Earth Turns –Tour of the Night Sky August 17 2012, 9pm EDT

Plan to Observe objects in the West first and work Eastward to capture objects before they set.… But your planisphere does not record the planets because they change from year to year. ECU computes and displays planetary and comet

orbits in the current time for your location. Mars, nearly set…Saturn (near the Western Horizon)We shall see the rings on Saturn

Practice Your SkillsSummer Triangle Summer/Fall BeaconsConstellation ObjectLyra VegaAquila AltairCygnus Deneb

Constellation ObjectSagittarius M8, M17 (the Swan)

Milky Way Star Clouds binocs: steam off the teapot – M23, M25 Open Clusters followed by M22, M28 Globular M11 (Wild Duck)

Ursa Major Mizar Double Star M101 Large Face on Galaxy – Challenge!Hercules M13 Great Globular! followed by m92Vulpecula M27 Dumbbell Nebula Cygnus M29 binoc nr Sadr (center of cygnus) Alberio Double StarLyra M57 Cosmic Cheerio Epsilon Lyra, Double-Double M56 Globular

Galactic Equator

line of the planets (ecliptic)

N/S line - Meridian

horizon

Celestial sphere showing Meridian, horizon, ecliptic and …